Lawyer for Netanyahu aide: PM knew of plan to leak classified document to press
In newly released December court transcript, attorney says Feldstein ‘whispered in PM’s ear’ he was going to leak top secret material to press, likely worked on PM’s instructions
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knew that his aide Eli Feldstein intended to leak a highly classified document to the foreign press, Feldstein’s lawyer told the Supreme Court last month according to a newly released court transcript.
The transcript of the December 5 hearing, first obtained and published by the Ynet news website on Wednesday, includes an exchange between Feldstein’s lawyer Oded Savoray and Supreme Court justice Alex Stein when Savoray was arguing for his client’s release from detention to house arrest.
Savoray also alleged during the proceedings that Feldstein was acting under Netanyahu’s instructions in the context of the security leaks scandal.
The allegations against Feldstein and Ari Rosenfeld, a reserves IDF noncommissioned officer in the Military Intelligence Directorate, are at the heart of a scandal at the Prime Minister’s Office in which a highly classified document ostensibly detailing Hamas’s priorities and tactics in hostage negotiations was unlawfully removed from the IDF’s military intelligence database and leaked to Germany’s Bild newspaper.
The affair centers around what prosecutors allege were Feldstein’s efforts to sway public opinion surrounding the negotiations for the release of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza in a more favorable direction for Netanyahu, days after six hostages were murdered by the terror group last August.
Netanyahu has denied any involvement or knowledge of the document’s leak and is not a suspect in the case.
Following the December 5 hearing, Stein upheld a lower court’s decision to release Feldstein from detention to house arrest, stating that he did not believe he was any longer a security threat, but ordered Rosenfeld to be kept behind bars due to the large amount of classified material he had been exposed to. Rosenfeld is still in custody.
In arguing for Feldstein’s release, Savoray insisted that Feldstein had not been aware of how sensitive the document he leaked was and how it could put the source of the document itself at risk.
“This joins the other indications… that he was working in the name of, and according to the instructions of, the prime minister,” Savoray posited.
He then went on to detail how, after Netanyahu held a press conference in early September following the murder by Hamas of the six hostages, Feldstein told the premier of his plan to leak the classified document, ostensibly to buttress the prime minister’s claims about Hamas’s negotiation tactics and divert blame from Netanyahu over the captives’ fate.
“I point to the involvement that [Feldstein] created with the prime minister, when [Feldstein] whispered in [the prime minister’s] ear. After the press conference, he said to the prime minister: ‘I have a document from my sources in the IDF Military Intelligence with the same content but more updated, [top Netanyahu spokesman and adviser Jonatan] Urich and I are working on getting it out,’” Savoray told the Supreme Court.
The lawyer said this exchange happened five days before the classified document was published in the German tabloid.
Savoray also claimed in court that Urich, a senior aide to Netanyahu, knew about the whole plan and was directing Feldstein, who was more junior. Savoray criticized the State Attorney’s Office for failing to indict Urich over the affair.
“Urich was involved in everything and Feldstein acted on his instructions. They decided to leak the document to the press together,” claimed Savoray.
The indictment against Feldstein states that he first leaked the document to an Israeli reporter on September 2, a day after it became known that the six hostages had been murdered, and told Urich that he had done so.
“Don’t reply and don’t call me, what I’m building for you now for the weekend is worth a million dollars,” Feldstein wrote excitedly, adding: “And [we] need the prime minister for this.”
But when that reporter’s article was blocked from publication by the military censor, Urich allegedly directed Feldstein to leak it to Bild through an associate, Srulik Einhorn, a former Likud campaign manager.
After Bild published its piece, Urich wrote to Feldstein, “The boss is pleased,” in an apparent reference to Netanyahu, whom he had ostensibly updated on the publication of the story.
